The Finishing Moment of Brooke Rhapsody's Marriage
by next-muffin
Summary: Inspector Spacetime fic  The Inspector faces his future murderer, the Unlikely Scubaman, in the desert. But it's not who he expects to see, underneath the oxygen mask!


The Inspector was dying.

He laid in the sand, shaking slightly, his head having narrowly missed a large, flowering cactus as he fell. Not that it mattered much.

The scuba man stood before him, silent, waiting, only marginally aware that Angie, Rory, and Brooke were hiding behind a nearby sand dune, waiting for the Inspector to transmogrify. But of course he didn't. He couldn't. The scuba man had stabbed him again as the blue flowers of transmogrification sprouted up over his body. Normally, his new, healed body would be revealed as the petals fell off of the flowers, but this time they merely wilted. The Inspector was dying.

"It is quite all right," the Inspector managed to say, somehow maintaining his usual cheerfulness, "I am aware of your identity."

The scuba man reached up to remove the oxygen mask but it was not a man underneath. It was a baby.

"Hello, Inspector," the baby somehow said; they were close enough to the DARSIT that it translated the baby's speech into matured English. "You have... been expecting me?"

"Naturally I have," the Inspector winked, trying his best not to cough up one of his four lungs. "I remember what you said to me that night I put you to bed in your room."

They had been standing there together, that night, the baby in his arms, the Inspector softly singing lullabies to distract from the noise downstairs: Greg, his screams, and the Circuit-Chaps cries of "BACKSPACE! BACKSPACE!"

The Inspector and the baby stood together under the ceiling of wave-shaped shadows and tiny glowing fish stickers. He pointed up at one, and the baby followed his finger to a particularly misshapen sticker.

"That's my friend Dave," the Inspector said, "Dave the Angler. Found him last year in Christmas, Florida, trying to build a castle out of rotting sailor corpses. Never finished, of course; they kept floating away! Ohhhh Dave the Angler. Still working on his castle!"

"You inspired me," the scuba baby said with a mischievous grin. "I'm here to help. Not you, though Dave the Angler. I'm going to bring your dead, rotting body to him. And then he can use your body to weigh the other bodies down! And then his castle will be finished in no time!"

And the baby giggled maniacally. With the Inspector joining in.

"Oh, Rainy," the Inspector let slip a grin that crept across his face. "You think it would be that easy." The Inspector struggling to speak was not that easy, of course, but he didn't let it show on his face. "I'm not a sailor, for one!"

The baby did not giggle this time, but merely said, "I do not go by Rainy anymore, Inspector. I am Roger, now."

"Drag me off to the middle of the desert, almost make me fall on a cactus, stab me while wearing a scuba suit to give my body to a morbid angler fish, and you're not going by Rainpocalypse, Evil Ruler of Everything anymore? Don't be silly. To you, we're still your peons; I can see it in your eyes."

Rainpocalypse tightened his hold on the oxygen mask's tube in his clenched fists, making a small squeaking sound as some of the gas inside was pushed out.

"Besides, Rainy," the Inspector finally continued, realizing that his dramatic pause had been prematurely broken, "the answer has been given. The quiet is rising. And I'm not even the real Inspector!"

He began to shiver, and the scuba man took a cautionary step back, watching in horror as the Inspector's skin began falling off, revealing what could only be described as milky white jello, swaying slightly on the uneven sand.

The Inspector had been Plasm the whole time.

"What? No!" the baby gasped, before a walkie talkie that had somehow been stored inside of the jello switched on.

"Hello? Can you hear me?" the Inspector's voice came booming through.

"No! Where are you! What's happening!" the baby looked around wildly, having come to the conclusion that the Inspector no longer existed.

Ignoring Rainpocalypse, the Inspector continued to speak, "Well, what are you lot all waiting for? Hurry up, Lakes! You too, Brooke, you vanilla old thing! The DARSIT's on the top of the ridge!"

The Inspector's three associates, still hiding behind the sand dune, hurried to the nearby ridge, where they could see the red phone booth shining defiantly in front of the sun. Not that they needed to hurry; the scuba man was still distracted by his sudden lack of object permanence to notice the associates escape.

But before they could leave, the Inspector had one more message for his attempted murderer. "Oh, and Rainy!" the Inspector managed to squeeze the walkie talkie near his mouth in the, as always, too-crowded DARSIT, "taste the jello! It tastes like beans! I love beans! Say hello to Dave the Angler for me!"

And they were gone.


End file.
